The new extensibility model in Visual Studio 2010 introduced the new VSIX file format and the concept of "extension" in order to share and install components for Visual Studio 2010, such as tool windows, packages and code editor extensions.

The problem is that reusable code-snippets (.snippet files) and old-style add-ins cannot be packaged and deployed via the VSIX format. In fact, they still need to be packaged to .Vsi installers, like it was back in Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.

There are severaly ways to install Vsi Builder 2010. You can download it directly from within Visual Studio 2010 via the Extension Manager tool, but you can also download the VSIX installer from CodePlex or from the Visual Studio Gallery.

Source Code

The extension has been completely written in Visual Basic 2010 and the source code is available on CodePlex via the source control offered by Team Foundation Server.

How do I use it?

In order to make things easier, I've recorded a short video that you can download from the extension page on CodePlex. Also, this is a screenshot that displays how it looks like:

save to and load from disk the list of items you want to package (new in this version)

Actually the extension was written by NOT using the MVVM pattern. The reason is that I'm currently studying the pros, cons and behaviors of this approach in a Visual Studio extension, but if it will work successfully the source code will be updated. Also, for the future I'm thinking of adding support to drag and drop of files from Windows Explorer. Please share your feedback and enjoy Vsi Builder 2010!